


Birthdaze

by Carbon65



Series: B's get degrees [4]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Birthday Fluff, Chemistry, Do not post on another site, Gen, Prompt Fill, Waffles, feather boas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 07:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbon65/pseuds/Carbon65
Summary: Mush Meyers turns twenty-one on a rainy Tuesday in March. There’s part of Mush that feels a little bit disappointed, like somehow the universe should have given him a twenty first birthday on a Friday instead. Wait… who said it needs to be Friday to celebrate?





	Birthdaze

Mush Meyers turns twenty-one on a rainy Tuesday in March. There’s part of Mush that feels a little bit disappointed, like somehow the universe should have given him a twenty first birthday on a Friday instead. Or even a Thursday. When Blink had turned twenty-two, they’d gone to one of the restaurants with a good bar and good food and they’d all come. For Racer’s birthday, they went to the track and placed penny bets on horses. And for his… for Mush’s twenty first birthday, he has a hot date with the Krebs cycle and some non-mendelian traits. 

He’s holed up in his room, wrapped up in a hoodie so old and ratty and massive that he can stick his thumbs through the holes and it doesn’t matter what he does – or doesn’t wear underneath. He’s got a mug of hot tea, a textbook that was way too expensive to not sit and read, and his college ruled notebook so he can do the problems at the end of the chapter. He’s going to get his stupid goddamn ACS bullshit if it kills him. And, it feels like it might.

There’s a knock on his door. He’s not getting up to answer it. It’s his birthday and if he wants to spend it drawing oxaloacetate and linkage diagrams, that’s his prerogative. He’s 21, and he can do almost everything except rent a car. Which he doesn’t care about here and doesn’t need to worry about at home. So, if he wants to stay in on a Tuesday night, he can do so.

“Mush!” The knock comes again. “Mush, com’mon!” That’s his lab partner, Kath. “You have to open up! I need to talk to you about 23!”

“Go ask Rosie about 23,” he calls back. 

“I didn’t know the answer, either.” 

And damn it, now he _is_ going to have to get up because pretty soon his roommate is going to come out and yell at him about disturbing her. 

He puts his mug down, untangles the blankets from his legs and climbs out of the papasan, leaving his textbook behind. He pulls the door open.

The promised Katherine is standing there in her best clubbing clothes (which, given that this happens to be Katherine Pultizer, involve a pair of boots he swears Skittery was looking at in Vogue last week and a sequined top from Goodwill). Behind her, Rosie is slightly more sedate (black sequin dress, sneakers) but just as excited. In the back, Katherine’s roommate, Spot, slouches against the wall in a pair of jeans, a crop top, and sparkly pink suspenders. 

“It’s your birthday, let us take you out,” Rosie practically begs. 

He looks between the three of them and shakes his head. “It’s almost my birthday, I want to sit in my hoodie with my tea and read.”

“You’re doing homework,” Spot argues. “Which, like… why are you doing homework?”

“I have to student teach tomorrow! It was this or grading.”

“You’re too mature, Mush.” Blink is standing in the doorway. Why is Blink in his room? How is Blink in his room.

Through a set of unbelievably unluck, Mush is in an almost-all-woman-and-him dorm. Non-resident males can’t get in unless someone escorts them. And, they have to pass Barb downstairs who might give them cookies and might call the campus police, depending on the hour, sobriety of the non-Barb participants, and whether or not she likes you. Barb likes Mush. She usually likes Blink. She has expressed a distinct distrust of Race and Albert, especially when the two of them show up together and giggle. Anything that makes Race and Albert laugh for more than a minute is not allowed in the dorm on Barb’s watch.

“No, I’m just not a masochist,” He shoots back. “No sane person wants to face thirteen year olds without any sleep.”

“Or with a hangover,” Blink mutters.

Mush opens his mouth and shuts it. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t want to drink. He’s tried alcohol once or twice and, frankly… he just doesn’t like the taste. It’s another reason he’s been avoiding his friends all day. He doesn’t want to get dragged out to The Journal or Beauty’s, or one of the half a dozen clubs where people in town go to get somewhere between schwasty and black out drunk on their twenty first. It feels less like a right of passage to him and more like a toll road.

“No hangover necessary,” Spot announces far too lightly for a woman who has won the school wide game of Assassins three years running and might run an illegal betting right. “Hell, no alcohol necessary.”

That makes Mush feel better. He doesn’t know why, but he also trusts Spot to defend him. He’s not sure how, but again, she had 37 confirmed Nerf kills in the last month. There are also rumors that she also might be a business kingpin in the news media of her 400 level micro econ classes fake stock market, but that’s a rumor he heard from Skittery who heard it from Jack who heard it from Charlie who heard it from Boots. And he has no idea what freshman Boots was doing in Spot’s class. 

Katherine nods, and then Blink nods, and Rosie nods.

Rosie scrunches her nose in that cute way she does when she’s thinking. “What about… bread pudding? Is bread pudding necessary?”

Katherine stares at her. “No, old people food is not necessary.”

“I don’t need to get carded for Jack Daniel’s hard sauce, thanks all the same, Rosie.” 

This was part of what he was afraid of. He doesn’t know why people insist that he needs to use his new horizontal ID to buy alcohol. He wouldn’t mind going to The Mayor’s Daughter on Thursday, and maybe standing up on the stage himself. But, alas, tonight is Tuesday.

Katherine gets a dangerous glint in her eyes. “You know what you do need? Waffles.”

Yes, damn her. Yes he does. He might even need them slightly more than he needs to understand the math behind linkage analysis. 

Blink takes his anemic nod as consent and runs with it. Sort of like he runs with scissors. Because he probably won’t take out his eye… again. (Blink has also claimed that he wanted to be a pirate but Limewire gave him too many viruses and that one Christmas, he got a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle.) 

“Birthday Waffles!” Blink starts texting excitedly. “Fuck yes, birthday waffles!”

“IHOP?”

“Birthday IHOP!” Rosie confirms, getting way too excited.

“Birthday IHOP,” he agrees. “Now, let me change.”

The five of them crowd into Katherine’s Prius (which she bought to piss her dad off), and head off in search of waffles, pancakes, and breakfast food of all kinds. Rosie sings and Spot sings and Blink texts furiously and Katherine demonstrates that the New York DMV will really give a driver’s license to anyone with $100 and enough patience to eventually not fuck up so badly they fail the test. (She’d taken it seven times before she’d passed. She’d even bragged about it, like she was proud of the fact. Mush thinks she should have failed an eighth, but if he admits that, he’s going to have to drive and fuck driving here.) 

They tumble back out at an IHOP somewhere in New Jersey. And somehow, despite the fact that it’s 11pm on a rainy Tuesday Night, several more people almost magically appear out of the rain in what could be a cool cinematic effect but probably just involved a parked car. Since Skittery is wearing his feather boa, it’s a pretty indication that it’s Skittery’s car, since that vehicle holds exactly five ideal humans, three luna bars, and the aforementioned boa uncomfortably (The hatchback’s “ideal human” is a child-size test dummy which folds in half and exists somewhere on the spectrum of spherical cows, PV=nRT, and frictionless surfaces.)

“So, we gonna get waffles?” Race asks, looking around at the group. “Because I want waffles.”

“Fuck yes,” Charlie agrees, using the turtle and the hare approach to getting the best seat at the table.

They tumble into the restaurant, intoxicated with being young and out late and the general aire of celebration that some people get arounds birthdays.

The entire IHOP turns to stare. He wants to point it out, wants to say something. He knows if he says, **_People are Staring_**, Blink will just laugh and say _Let Them_ and Skittery will drape his boa around his shoulders and drag him inside. And so, he doesn’t.

Except that Skittery must see that look, because he slings his feather boa over Mush’s shoulders anyway. And, fuck it, he’s 21, and he’s not ancient, and it doesn’t fucking matter that its Tuesday. And so, he gives it all he’s got and saunters to the table to eat some damn waffles. 

It might be the International House of Pancakes, but they have the best goddamn waffles in the country. This opinion is only re-inforced as he watches Rosie draw the entire Krebs cycle in Katherine’s red lipstick while Katherine chants the names, and Spot tries to describe them, and Race and Blink and Skittery try to contort themselves into them. 

This… this counts as studying on his twenty first birthday, right?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a dialogue prompt on Tumblr: "People are Staring".
> 
> PV=nRT is called the ideal gas law. Along with a spherical cows and frictionless surfaces, these are used to simplify math problems in the real world for teaching and are basically fictitious scenarios. Has it been mentioned that Skittery and I are both MASSIVE nerds?
> 
> Questions, Comments, Concerns, Suggestions, Other topics I should write so I can avoid writing my four papers?


End file.
